As Syria's civil war has intensified, thousands of children have died in brutal attacks and many more have been injured, traumatised or forced to flee their homes.
Suspense builds up until (*spoiler alert*) Mount Vesuvius erupts in a red column of flame, showering fiery rain down on the children and forcing them to flee for their lives.
Yanukovych appeared in a video address on Saturday evening claiming he was still the president, but he has lost the support of most of his party and his main goal now will probably be to flee the country without being arrested.
And for them it's the same thing so they flee into neighbouring territories".
A Turkish official said a brigadier general was among 1,000 Syrians to flee across the border in the last 24 hours, Reuters reports.
When, at the end, the character Ferdinand urges Salim to flee for his life, he does so in language that seems to open a window on to Naipaul's inner vision: "We're all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones.
He acknowledged and apologised for his administration's promotion of dumping cheap US rice on Haiti, thereby destroying Haitian rice production and forcing rice farmers to flee to the overcrowded cities. Buttonholed in a UN hallway, he claims he thought that Haitians would "get aid to skip agricultural development and go straight into an industrial era".
But consular officials in Colombo are refusing to allow the donor to enter Britain because they claim she is simply seeking an excuse to flee Sri Lanka.
Over 200,000 people have been killed and a staggering 11 million have been forced to flee their homes.
In 1971-72 Ruiz was a film adviser to the Socialist party in Allende's coalition, but was forced to flee the country during the coup d'etat of 1973.
Those early attempts to flee from being Antony Sher were useful when it came to being Gellburg, a man uncomfortable in his own skin.
